As a priest I tend to hate the late fall. Mostly because it is our so-called stewardship season: the time in which we once again beg people to give money to the church. We try to pretend that it is about giving in the most generous sense, that we are concerned with Time, Talent, and Treasure. Really, though, we’re talking about money. It is a pledge drive.

Some churches do an excellent job of year-round stewardship and building up a spirit of generous giving. I hope you might be part of one of those. I’ve never been.

We do stewardship like we do pulling teeth, extremely reluctantly and only after we’ve exhausted all other possibilities.

'Jesus isn't speaking only of the generous widow, but of the vicious system which condemns her. ' Click To Tweet

As if it weren’t hard enough to talk about money in church in late October and November, we always are treated to a lectionary which makes such talk more difficult. Like it knows what we’re trying to do, and in true Mean Girls fashion gives us a cruel trick to humiliate us.

Perhaps the cruelest of jokes comes in Proper 27 in Year B with Mark 12:38-44. This is often referred to as the story of the Widow’s Mite. If you’ve been in church for any time at all, you’ll have heard this story. It seems to be a story of sacrificial giving and it is often praised as a true example of generosity. But I don’t think Jesus thinks so. And neither does Debie Thomas.

In her haunting piece, “The Widowed Prophet,” Thomas reminds us of the context of this woman’s giving: that it is in direct contrast to the Temple authorities who steal people’s property. She is giving the last two cents to her name, leaving her with literally nothing but the clothes on her back.

Rather than this being a joyful story of generosity (though there is a hint of that here), it is a more generous helping of disdain for a Temple system which exploits the people and unabashedly steals from them. Then Jesus turns around and predicts the Temple’s demise and the chaos that will ensue.

My response to the piece (and others) is that I hope that we, as followers of Jesus, hear this indictment like true disciples and prophets, not as those Scribes and authorities who ignore Jesus’s message for the message we want to hear.

For Jesus isn’t speaking only of the generous widow, but of the vicious system which condemns her. He isn’t simply saying “good on you!” to this woman and “do like she does!” to his followers but also “you brood of vipers!” to the authorities and “don’t extort your neighbor!” to his followers.

Don’t you dare go into church on Sunday and praise this widow for her generosity and think “man, I wish I could do that too! If only…” because this is not a story of optional generous giving! This is not a story of doing a little more than would be prudent in hopes that GOD will provide! That has nothing to do with this story at all!

This is a story of abuse and tragedy. It is a story of a broken system and the people broken by that system.

And if we whistle as we walk on by it, we won’t acknowledge the mess, the wreckage, the devastation in our world that we’re being called to see.

I also worry, however, and to a smaller degree, of course, that we will mistake this condemnation for the Temple and criticism of the Temple authorities for an anti-clerical agenda on Jesus’s part: that Jesus would have us punish our local congregations for trying to survive on shoestring budgets and begging from the dwindling resources of retirees. It doesn’t really work 1-to-1 like that. It could in some places, but it isn’t the same. Jesus isn’t speaking of leadership generically, but these Temple authorities specifically.

But this is our trouble in an anti-institutional moment. In a time in which two generations of Americans have grown up skeptical and distrustful of all institutions, we have struggling institutional churches trying to appeal to our better sides, our hopes and generous willingness to support the lives of the weak and the destitute. But it also means we are in danger of missing Jesus’s fundamental point and purpose for criticizing that particular institution and shining a light on that particular woman.

Jesus is about restitution and restoration. Jesus is about bringing us all back into unity and safety. He gives thanks for this woman’s generosity knowing that those 2 pennies weren’t enough to protect her: her life was already over. That this greedy, self-protective people refused to protect her.

It brings to mind another nameless widow: the one whose son has died. They meet her outside the city (Where else would she be? She is literally set apart from the people) in a funeral procession and Jesus has pity on her. She has nothing now: no protection, safety, health, opportunity, hope. In bringing her son back to life, he actually gives her a new life.

These acts of restoration and responses to the plight of the endangered are witnessed, seen and related to the disciples. They are teachings to them about the Kingdom, about the world that will be there’s to create. They aren’t empty critiques of a broken system or feel-good healings from a happy healer. This is how Jesus will transform the world: by transforming the hearts of those he meets.

My hope is that we feel compelled to reject the widow’s mite, but not because she wouldn’t be poor without it (she was just as likely to be dead in 4 days whether she kept those pennies or not) but because this whole arrangement of generous giving in the church is a false dichotomy. We must reject the widow’s mite as a Christian concept. We must reject the idea that this is what saves us or that this is what makes us good Christians: how generous we are with our money.

Instead, I hope we focus on what Jesus cares about: restoration. That we are able to make lives of generosity our priority. Lives lived by giving and restoring the health of the poor and disadvantaged; that we restore the dignity of those the church has trampled on; that we extend an embrace to the people whose sexuality frightens us or whose temperaments disgust us. That we make our personal and corporate mission be Jesus’s mission to reconcile the world.

That work does take money. That work does take coordinating. That work does take some cheerleading. And it is aided by a common place and means of communication and sacred vessels and people to launder our dirty towels. It takes heat in the winter and AC in the summer and it takes water for the indoor plumbing. It takes wifi to connect us prudently and speedily and it takes commitment that we can trust that we will all gather at the same time. And most of all, it takes communal prayer and worship, that we may all remember our mission.

I hope we remember that it is Jesus’s mission that we seek, not the false dichotomies our intellect tantalizes us with or the comfort our hearts agitate for. The work that restores us. The work that unifies us. The work that guides our hearts to generosity. Mission. To the weak for the almighty.